Once again, I have to remind myself that this isn’t real. It’s never been real, no matter how much it feels like it.
No matter how much time she and I have been spending together, no matter how much I’ve grown used to falling asleep next to her and seeing her when I wake up in the morning…it’s not real, and Maeve doesn’t want a mate.
She’s trusting me to do this for her and let her go. That’s the entire point.
“Alright,” she says, pushing up off of me, seeming to have regained some of her energy. “Let’s go dance!”
We stand together, and she takes my hand, tugging me toward the dance floor, her giggles rising up into the night.
When we stop and she tucks her head onto my chest, I realize my heart has stopped spiking in her presence and has started feeling steadier. Pleasant. Easy.
Maeve is home for me.
And that feeling is blossoming into something else—something I don’t quite understand. Or maybe just something I’m afraid to name.
***
When Maeve runs out of fabric again and starts to get frustrated with her lack of progress, I convince her to walk to the ice cream shop with me.
“I’m just…” She brushes her hair out of her face and takes a lick of her strawberry scoop. I try not to stare at her when she does, the sweet pink stripe of it over her tongue. “It’s frustrating. The deadline is coming up quick, and I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done. I don’t use any polyester, and I only order from ethical manufacturers. But that means the fabric is expensive. And with the number of samples they’re asking for, it’ssoexpensive. But I can’t give up this opportunity. I just don’t know what to do about it.”
“Is the ice cream helping?” I ask when she takes another angry lick.
Looking up at me and breathing a bit hard, a little swipe of pink over her lip, she says, “Yeah. A little.”
Stopping, I reach out and wipe it from her skin with the pad of my thumb. “Maeve.”
“Yes?”
“I want to give you money.”
She rolls her eyes, turning away from me and holding her hair down with one hand to keep it from blowing into her ice cream. “We’ve already talked about this, Felix—I am not taking your money.”
“Think of it as a loan, then.”
“It’s just—”
“I have enough in my savings to front you the cost of the fabric,” I say, stepping around in front of her. “And you know what? Actually, no—I don’t want it back. I want a chance to invest in this early. Before it blows up and goes global.”
“Felix—”
“No, Maeve. Think about how much I’ve done for you,” I’m smirking at her, forcing her to smile, too. “The least you can do is let me get in on this whole thing before you go public. I want to be rich like Lachlan, have a whole collection of different bikes to ride.”
“Valerie said he only has the one.’
“You get the point, Maeve.”
She bounces on her heels, looking left and right, then sighs and looks down at her ice cream before flicking her eyes back up to me. “Fine.But don’t think your little twisted narrative is getting to me. I am paying that money back to you. And that’s final.”
“We’ll have to fight over it, then,” I say as I notice someone stepping out of a door down at the end of the street.
I realize who it is. And where we are.
“Come here,” I say, grabbing her ice cream and dropping it in the trash.
“Hey!” It’s the most offended she’s ever looked, and I’ll have to buy her a new one after this. But now, I grab her, box her in against a brick wall of a brownstone, and kiss her.
At first, she’s a bit resistant, but then she melts into me, and I sigh into the kiss. She tastes like strawberries, sweet and cool, her tongue sending a chill down my spine when it pokes into my mouth, probing, gentle.
